Detailed Description

template<typename MatrixType>
class Eigen::FullPivLU< MatrixType >

LU decomposition of a matrix with complete pivoting, and related features.

Template Parameters

_MatrixType

the type of the matrix of which we are computing the LU decomposition

This class represents a LU decomposition of any matrix, with complete pivoting: the matrix A is decomposed as where L is unit-lower-triangular, U is upper-triangular, and P and Q are permutation matrices. This is a rank-revealing LU decomposition. The eigenvalues (diagonal coefficients) of U are sorted in such a way that any zeros are at the end.

This decomposition provides the generic approach to solving systems of linear equations, computing the rank, invertibility, inverse, kernel, and determinant.

This LU decomposition is very stable and well tested with large matrices. However there are use cases where the SVD decomposition is inherently more stable and/or flexible. For example, when computing the kernel of a matrix, working with the SVD allows to select the smallest singular values of the matrix, something that the LU decomposition doesn't see.

the determinant of the matrix of which *this is the LU decomposition. It has only linear complexity (that is, O(n) where n is the dimension of the square matrix) as the LU decomposition has already been computed.

the image of the matrix, also called its column-space. The columns of the returned matrix will form a basis of the image (column-space).

Parameters

originalMatrix

the original matrix, of which *this is the LU decomposition. The reason why it is needed to pass it here, is that this allows a large optimization, as otherwise this method would need to reconstruct it from the LU decomposition.

Note

If the image has dimension zero, then the returned matrix is a column-vector filled with zeros.

This method has to determine which pivots should be considered nonzero. For that, it uses the threshold value that you can control by calling setThreshold(const RealScalar&).

cout << "Notice that the middle column is the sum of the two others, so the "

<< "columns are linearly dependent." << endl;

cout << "Here is a matrix whose columns have the same span but are linearly independent:"

<< endl << m.fullPivLu().image(m) << endl;

Output:

Here is the matrix m:
1 1 0
1 3 2
0 1 1
Notice that the middle column is the sum of the two others, so the columns are linearly dependent.
Here is a matrix whose columns have the same span but are linearly independent:
1 1
3 1
1 0

the LU decomposition matrix: the upper-triangular part is U, the unit-lower-triangular part is L (at least for square matrices; in the non-square case, special care is needed, see the documentation of class FullPivLU).

the number of nonzero pivots in the LU decomposition. Here nonzero is meant in the exact sense, not in a fuzzy sense. So that notion isn't really intrinsically interesting, but it is still useful when implementing algorithms.

Allows to prescribe a threshold to be used by certain methods, such as rank(), who need to determine when pivots are to be considered nonzero. This is not used for the LU decomposition itself.

When it needs to get the threshold value, Eigen calls threshold(). By default, this uses a formula to automatically determine a reasonable threshold. Once you have called the present method setThreshold(const RealScalar&), your value is used instead.

Parameters

threshold

The new value to use as the threshold.

A pivot will be considered nonzero if its absolute value is strictly greater than where maxpivot is the biggest pivot.

a solution x to the equation Ax=b, where A is the matrix of which *this is the LU decomposition.

Parameters

b

the right-hand-side of the equation to solve. Can be a vector or a matrix, the only requirement in order for the equation to make sense is that b.rows()==A.rows(), where A is the matrix of which *this is the LU decomposition.

Returns

a solution.

This method just tries to find as good a solution as possible. If you want to check whether a solution exists or if it is accurate, just call this function to get a result and then compute the error of this result, or use MatrixBase::isApprox() directly, for instance like this:

bool a_solution_exists = (A*result).isApprox(b, precision);

This method avoids dividing by zero, so that the non-existence of a solution doesn't by itself mean that you'll get inf or nan values.

If there exists more than one solution, this method will arbitrarily choose one. If you need a complete analysis of the space of solutions, take the one solution obtained by this method and add to it elements of the kernel, as determined by kernel().